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Vienna becomes classroom for OC students

The following article appeared in the Edmond Sun on Tuesday, September 18, 2007:

EDMOND —
A group of
Oklahoma Christian University students traveled across Europe this
summer in order to acquire college credit and an experience of a
lifetime.

The 16 students from Oklahoma Christian and Cascade
College, OC’s branch school in Oregon, began by spending five days in
London. Next, the group flew to Vienna, Austria, where they took up
residence in Schloss Neuwaldegg, an 18th-century castle in the western
part of the city that OC rents for study abroad students and other
visitors.

“I thought Vienna was different than some of the other
cities because it had not been taken over by tourists,” OC sophomore
Alyssa Beekman said. “I still saw people doing their daily grocery
shopping and kids getting out of school. In Vienna, it was easier to
blend in because not everything was touristy.”

For the next
seven weeks, the students split their time between living like citizens
of Vienna, listening to class lectures, visiting museums and historical
buildings, attending operas and ballets, and traveling outside Austria.
The program allows participants to travel with a train pass across the
entire continent of Europe.

Shawn Jones, academic dean and Bible
professor from Cascade College, sponsored the trip along with his wife,
Nancy. Jones said he witnessed the academic, personal, social and
spiritual growth that resulted from the students’ time in Europe.

“Their
worldview is greatly expanded,” he said. “History becomes more than
textbooks and pictures. It is an absolute thrill to see the maturation
of our students in such a short period. They are blessed to be in a
setting that gives them significant life skills.”

While this
program, along with Latin American Studies, gives students six to eight
credit hours, other study abroad programs during the fall semester
allow students to earn 12 to 16 hours of credit. Vienna Studies and
Pacific Rim Studies both send groups of approximately 30 students
around the globe.

Ibaraki Exchange is a long-term program
concentrating on full immersion of a smaller number of students in the
schools and in the culture of Japan and Korea.